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To Text or Not To Text?

That is the Question.
By: Talya Rosensweig
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Ask the class!
Does your phone come with instant-messaging techniques?
How often do you instant message per a day?
Do you know anybody in your life who does NOT instant
message?
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Introduction:
The current generation of adolescence are a generation of
teenagers who communicate heavily via instant-messaging
communication. Gone is the old classic stereotype of
adolescent girls chatting endlessly with their friends on
telephones. Instead, it has been replaced by both males and
females alike texting and instant messaging their friends all day
long in various forms
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Influential Elements:
1. Emotional
2. Developmental
3. Cognitive
4. Societal
5. Familial
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Why are we even discussing this?
Observations
Differences over past 8 years.
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Losing Touch
When things come at you very fast, naturally you lose touch
with yourself.
-Marshall McLuhan.


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Pascal: The Greatest of our
Miseries
Distraction is the only thing
that consoles us for our
miseries , and yet is it itself the
greatest of our miseries

-17th century French philosopher Blaise Pascal


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What does this include?
Instant messaging would include all current forms of instant
communication, such as (but not limited to)
Aol Instant Messenger (AIM),
Google Chat (Gchat)
Facebook messaging,
Black Berry Messenger (BBMing),
WhatsApp Messenger (WhatsApp)
Twitter
Text messaging.
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Developmental
3 main areas of change:
Biological
Cognitive
Social
Occurs everywhere. No matter where the adolescent lives.
Subrahmanyam and Smahel (2011)
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Biological Development
Puberty
Height,
Weight,
Sexual maturation

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Cognitive Development
Thinking in abstract forms
Develop the skills to think and reason about various life situations
Areas in the brain, especially the frontal lobe, are still in the process of majorly
developing during the adolescent years

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Social Development
Adolescents are able to drive, drop out of school, take up a job, join the
army, start dating, be sexually active, and even get married
Achieving new and more mature relations with age-mates of both sexes
As their bodies change physically and sexually with the onset of
puberty, adolescents have to learn to establish new relations with their
age mates, both boys and girls. Social activities and social
experimentation become pre-eminent and help them learn adult social
skills leading to good social adjustment throughout their lives. (p. 28)
Establishing interpersonal connectionsboth those with peers, such
as friendships and romantic relationships, and those with parents,
siblings and other adults outside the familyis one of the most
important developmental tasks of adolescence (p.6)
-Subrahmanyam and Greenfield (2008)
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Effects of Instant-Messaging on
Adolescent Development
If this is true, then it is important to look at how instant
messaging is effecting the establishment of interpersonal
connections, as well as how an adolescent constructs his or
her identity
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History:
Scientific capability to send a text message began to be available
in the mid 1980s
1995 the average amount of text messages per a customer per a
month, was .4.
2000, approximately thirty-five text messages were being sent per
a customer per a month
2001, 12.1 billion text messages were sent.
2004, approximately 24 billion had been sent.
In 2006, phone companies reported that on Christmas day itself,
over 205 million text messages had been sent out in the United
Kingdom.

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TODAY:
In todays society, almost all adolescents seem to have their own
phones or smart phones.
According to market research done in 2011 on adolescents
between the ages of thirteen through nineteen, seventy-nine
percent had mobile phones, and fifteen percent had smart phones.
According to Coyne et al 2011, every day, over a billion text
messages are sent through mobile phones around the world
(p.150).
From October through December 2006, Verizon Wireless hosted
17.7 billion text messages, more than double the total from the
same period in 2005. (Subrahmanyam and Greenfield, 2008, p. 4).
According to Ling (2004) a study done in 2002 indicated that more
then 85% of teens and young adults send at least 1 text message
per a day.

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Statstics from Virgin Mobile, USA:
More than 9/10 teens with cell phones have text messaging
capability;
2/3 use text messages daily.
More than of Virgins customers aged 15-20 send or receive
at least 11 text messages a day,
Nearly 1/5 text 21 times a day or more.
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Frequency of Computer Based
Instant Messaging
According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project (2005), IM
usage is so popular among adolescents, that 75% of them use it
and 65% report that they use IM to communicate with their friends.
Kraut et al. (2006) writes that when exploring what three main
activities adolescents are attending online, they devoted the bulk of
their time online to three domains: IM (M= 38.97 minutes, SD-
42.8), visiting web sites (M = 33.10 minutes, SD= 29.4) and email
(M=21.70 minutes, SD = 16.5). (p.186)
Instant messaging is the top most popular use of the
Internet, according to Kraut et al. (2006).
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The iGeneration sends and receives 3,339 texts a month,
which translates into more than six messages every waking
hour while making and receiving only 191 phone calls.
Interestingly enough, this is in contrast, to just a few years ago,
in 2009, when adolescents sent and received about the same
number of text messages as phone calls. (Rosen, 2011)

Now we must explore what this means!
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Gender Differences:
Males: 1 hour, 47 minutes:
Most common between ages 13 15
Most frequently send short text messages often only one word
Females: 1 hour 46 minutes.
Most common between ages 16- 19
Sends an average of 9 per a day
Most frequently send longer, emotionally based messages.

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Positive Social Effects:
Kraute (2006) it is actually BENIFICIAL to adolescents
Gives the overall feeling of allowing teenagers to build and
maintain social ties with particular friends as well as to create a
sense of belonging with groups of peers with whom they do not
necessarily feel close
Way to deal with concerns in adolescence:
Sexual identity
Race
Gender
Romantic Relationships


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Positive Social Effects Continued:
Helps adolescents in relieving social anxieties
They feel safer in disclosing personal information
They feel a greater sense of privacy and less of a fear of rejection.
Adolescents feel less socially anxious, therefore, they are more easily
able to form relationships with various peers




- Subrahmanyam and Greenfield (2008)
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World Effects:
An adolescents online and offline worlds are psychologically
connected. (Subrahmanyam et al 2011, p. 27).
IM venues create their own culture and develop their own norms,
as part of that culture
To adolescents, the virtual world is just as real as the real world,
and that this is the reason that the challenges and tasks are
exhibiting themselves in the online world as well.
Adolescents have formed a self-set of rules of what is acceptable
as content of a text message and what isnt.
What can be a prank message and what is a serious message
Appropriate to call VS. appropriate to respond via text message.
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CONS:
The online environment of chatting in an anonymous way
instantly can be healthy and socially building for some. Yet for
others, it can be a pathological web of lies and deceit.
42% of participants in their study reported that they pretended
to be somebody else when instant messaging with others.
82 out of 95 participants pretended to be an older person
There is never any real identifiable information about the
person that the chatting conversation is with
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Cons Continued:
Bullying
Time spent with others
Family structure - Parents not savvy enough
Illegal activities
Prostitution
Smuggling
Cheating
Home alone parties

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Cons Continued


Substituting face-to-face conversations for instant messaging
conversations
Teens feel less psychologically close to their instant messaging
partners than to their partners in phone and face-to-face
interactions. Teens also find instant messaging less enjoyable
than, but as supportive as, phone or face-to-face interactions.
( Subrahmanyam and Greenfield(2008)
According to Kraute et al (2006) - they report enjoying instant
messaging conversations substantially less than those conducted
by phone or in person. (p.15)
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Cons Continued:
Text messages tend to focus on the detail oriented aspects
such as who, what, where and when, and do not focus as much
on the how, the why, and the emotions of a person.
Mobile (telephoning) equals SMS for me, nothing more.
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Cons continued:
Talking to strangers!
Still quite immature disclosing private information
School Environments
Norway (1999) 24% used mobile during class
Effects on Sleep patterns:
20% send and receive texts after midnight
It seems that todays youth have replaced the flashlight with a
mobile telephone when hiding under the covers. Instead of solitary
reading, they are engaged in social networking(p. 151).



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Developmental Issues:
Constantly being on.
Always online, always connected and some even say never
alone
Adolescents are thus able to access emails, instant messages and
even their social networking site profiles from their cell phones and
smart devices, at home, at school, or while on the move.
Identity issues - confusing!
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Discussion:
The question with anything that is relatively new, is does it help
or hinder the growth of the adolescent? Is there cause for
concern? Or is worrying worthless?
Are digital worlds giving rise to new behaviors or are
adolescents transferring traditional adolescent behaviors onto
them? What are some of the opportunities, challenges, and
dangers that come with technology use? How can we ensure
that young people use technology safely?
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More than of adolescents contact their peers and family
members via instant messaging technology on a daily basis.
Interestingly, Lenhart, Ling, Campbell, & Purcell, (2010) study
noted that adolescents tend to communicate more frequently via
technology then they do face to face.
75% of teenagers who use cell phones have service plans for
unlimited text messaging, and 54% contact friends daily via text
messaging (Lenhart et al., 2010).
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Thoughts?
Policies?
Classroom effects
Rules and regulation
Telegraphic speech

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Socially:
Not being challenged to deal with it!
Scaffolding
Dual ; identities

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Clinically?
Study done @ NSC&FG
20 4
Meeting the client where they are at?

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Cultural Competence?
Shabbos
Survey of 1,200 teenagers in modern Orthodox institutions
was completed. 17.7% were reported texting on Shabbos.
Frankly, even were I a secular parent, I would tear my hair
out if a child told me that he or she could not go twenty-five
hours without SMSing instant messages to his or her friends.
Im addicted, they say. Can there be a greater confession of
total inner emptiness than these teenagers terror of being
alone for a moment to contemplate, or their inability to create
a personal identity apart from the approval of their friends?
Churches

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Questions?
. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=-
XiSIGPIi7s - Day to Disconnect